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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24103324">story received, story included</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fypical/pseuds/fypical'>fypical</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes &amp; Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Related, Holiday in the Country, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, husbands on holiday: now with crimes, watson's private and only minimally scandalous case notes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:08:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,113</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24103324</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fypical/pseuds/fypical</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I thought I knew my Watson.” And I need not note, except for my own sake, how it filled my heart with joy and warmth to hear those words.  |||  personal notes upon the adventure of the devil's foot, taken from the private notebook of john h. watson, spring 1897.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>story received, story included</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>[rolls in nearly a decade after my first-ever holmes related fanfic (it's on ffnet and no, i won't link it) with ... basically just a rewrite of canon from a different perspective] call it a comeback!</p>
<p>some relatively mild warnings in this for mentions of drug use, drug-induced hallucinations, and implied / referenced "period-typical homophobia" (a phrase i absolutely hate but in this case relates to laws of the time that thankfully no longer exist)</p>
<p>title is, as always, taken from siken - this time from "editor's pages: the long and short of it".</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>From the private notebook of Dr. John H. Watson, spring 1897</span>
  </em>
  
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>After the opinion of the good Doctor Agar (notes: case autumn 1895), who I believe to be the only medical professional beside myself that Holmes trusts, it has been advised that Holmes take complete and total rest from his usual mysteries for avoidance of a complete breakdown. He, it should be noted, is not the first of our shared profession to make such a point; I have been telling Holmes the very same for weeks, now, but he has a terrible habit of dismissing my concerns as ‘fussing’ no matter how patiently he tolerates them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In any case, he seemed convinced by Dr. Agar’s and my own combined efforts, and Mrs. Hudson and I managed to get him and myself packed up and bundled off to Cornwall before he had any chance to change his mind on the matter - or to be distracted by another case brought by a client or the professionals of Scotland Yard. At the very least, Dr. Agar’s threats that his breakdown might permanently impair his ability to do his work - which I found to be somewhat extreme and was therefore grateful he said it and not I - made their point. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>We’d taken a cottage near Poldhu Bay, standing by its lonesome upon a grassy headland, with the closest neighbour being a vicarage some few miles away. From our little whitewashed house, and across the bay, Mount’s Bay seemed to loom large and ominous; it seems that death and ruin were determined to follow Holmes even on holiday, though ships wrecked to Nature’s whims would hardly interest him unless part of a greater problem for him to solve. It is a quiet enough place thanks to its isolation, though somewhat extreme, and surrounded by moors; we remained close enough to the coast for the sea wind to whip up periodically, and while we found ourselves largely insulated, it could howl when it liked. And the moors themselves are scattered with enormous stones, pitched against one another in monument to some lost Cornish culture. These, at least, had captured Holmes’s attention upon our arrival and allowed him some sort of enigma with which to occupy his mind, as have the mysteries of the ancient Cornish language, some of which can be found scratched upon the stones themselves. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Were it not for this little problem alone, I fear that he would have been lost to the syringe for the entirety of our little holiday, and I found himself inescapably grateful to those ancient Cornish people for having left enough of a mystery behind them that Holmes might spend his time writing a thesis on the nature of their language. Our little cottage began piling up with books on linguistics and history, the anthropological minds of the age stacked precariously alongside the chair Holmes had claimed as his own. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not that, of course, it managed to hold him for very long. I had caught him twice unfurling the little morocco case that held that godforsaken collection of his; knowing my own feelings upon the matter, he both times attempted poorly to hide the case and the long rubber band ‘round his arm from me, and hunched up as though he might have been a child caught misbehaving. Each time, I’d left it well enough alone - Holmes has heard my opinions on it many times by now, and there is no denying that his mind had been overstretched of late. Hardly surprising. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was also taken to wandering ‘round the moors for long stretches of time, and while most times he returned and threw himself into writing his ongoing thesis, there were the occasional times when he returned pale, looking for all the world as if he had come across some horror upon the cliffs. One time in particular, he returned and promptly fit himself into the space next to me upon the sofa and leaned bonelessly against me as though I were a piece of furniture, having stolen half the length of the blanket I’d draped over myself, for the rest of the evening. I had been a little nettled, half-worried for his well-being, for the few days previous, but the sight of him dozing on the sofa, head upon my shoulder, had done a great deal to ease my apprehensions. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In addition to Holmes’s daily ramblings around the moors, upon which I occasionally accompanied him, we also had occasion to meet our nearest neighbour, the current inhabitant of the vicarage. He had shown up at our door in the midst of the day and had managed to catch us both unawares - the timing had been rather bad, as I had found myself catching Holmes breaking from his research with his seven-percent solution for the second time, and had been very startled indeed to find a man of God at the door. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Holmes, of course, looked for all the world as if he had spent the day engaged in the most respectable of activities by the time Mr. Roundhay - the vicar - had gotten past me and into the sitting room. It’s just as well that he didn’t go any further or ask to stay overnight, else he might have found the unused second bedroom; but he himself had something of an interest in archaeology and so he and Holmes became absorbed rather quickly in discussing the little details of the ancient monuments about the moors, and we soon found ourselves invited to dinner at the vicarage, where Mr. Roundhay lived and kept Mortimer Tregennis as a lodger. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, Mr. Roundhay could talk enough for all four of us, but Mr. Tregennis hardly said anything at all, any of the times we met him, and may or may not have ever noticed our presence among his own melancholic thoughts, at all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was, of course, revealed to a cold-blooded killer, who murdered his sister and drove his brothers to madness over the family fortune, which made all his quiet introspection take on something of an ominous manner. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In any case, we seemed to appear to Mr. Roundhay as little more than friends holidaying together - which was more or less the truth of it, in a manner of speaking - and he continued to appear at our door, even sometimes if only to drop his own personal archaeological library upon us, which Holmes would return piecemeal as he finished with the books, each time we dined at the vicarage. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The facts of the crime that threw itself down around our heads in the middle of our holiday and quite disturbed our peace can be found in the 1897 book of case notes, indexed under “C” and related to the Cornish Horror, which made it to the variety of English journalism while we were still holidaying in our cottage - and so I will not detail them all here, since I doubt Holmes will ever want the story told in any case. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I will, however, leave some personal notes upon it, since it marked such a change in Holmes’s life that it ought to be noted, even if it will never see the light of day. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For all his rambling about the moors, I noticed as I accompanied Holmes that he kept well inland; furthermore, he alternated, between putting himself quite firmly between myself and the distant cliff’s edge, and straying even further inland and leaving me to bear the first gusts of sea wind. Even as we walked together, that one fateful day, and discussed the details of the Tregennis case - not yet solved, at that point, and soon to be done away with for the sake of discussing the ancient celts - he would stop now and then, concealing or not noticing his slow drift away from the cliffs through his search for arrow-heads. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was no mistaking the form of Dr. Sterndale when we returned from our arrow-head hunt, yet I sensed a kind of irritation from Holmes not unlike that which he has begun to occasionally express at the appearance of an unknown visitor to our lodgings in London. We had managed all to avoid one another thus far, though I had seen him a few times, further out than we upon the moors, and so to see him now standing and waiting in our sitting room unsettled me as much as it seemed to annoy Holmes. But whatever plans Dr. Sterndale had interrupted, Holmes appeared to have forgotten them entirely by the time Sterndale’s visit was ended - he followed Sterndale out the door with the expression of one dedicated to a day of stealthy pursuit, and I did not see him again until the evening. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This was where things became a little more bleak. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It would have been hard for me, knowing Holmes as I do, not to notice the way in which he had thrown himself into the case - as if perhaps avoiding something else, even if it may have simply been the tedium of holiday. But I perceived that it was another thing entirely that might have been troubling him; for while I no longer admonished him for his habits of which I disapproved, I had still become quite good at observing his indulgences of them. In this case, however, after those first two incidents, it appeared as though he had not engaged in his use of the drugs again; indeed, I confess that I had shallowly and briefly searched the cottage for his usual hiding spots, and found nothing. It is always easier, in the publications, to set aside my own deductions unless they suit the track of the story, but here I deduced that whatever might have been upon his mind, the cocaine and morphine could very easily have been part of it. Just as much as his fraying mental state which had brought us to Cornwall in the first place; his increasingly frequent dark moods, his long stretches without rest or sustenance. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>My suspicions were confirmed, at least in the latter (and worse) part, when Holmes explained his experiment. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I must admit that I objected strongly to the idea of testing whatever it was that Holmes had scraped from the smoke guard of the lamp in Tregennis’s room - it was not the first of his experiments that reminded me of Stamford’s advice all those years ago, that he might as likely poison himself as anyone else out of sheer curiosity. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I cannot force you to stay- ” Holmes said, and though he appeared absorbed in beginning his experiment, I nonetheless perceived what I thought to be a kind of apprehension in his expression. Not doubt - never doubt, for as long as Holmes and I have known one another, he has never doubted me, nor I him - but a kind of unspoken plea. One perhaps he did not even know he was communicating. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course I shall stay,” said I, and watched his expression lighten tremendously with the confirmation. Even after all this time, I am captivated by how easily a smile or laugh can overtake him, even in the midst of such a dire and dangerous circumstance. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I thought I knew my Watson.” And I need not note, except for my own sake, how it filled my heart with joy and warmth to hear those words. At Holmes’s request, I opened the door, and sat in one of the chairs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Neither he nor I imagined what we would encounter, once the powder began to burn.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To even think of those dreadful moments now renders me nervous, despite my logical knowledge of the plant and its effects now being firmly in place. The terrible things I saw… they will never see publication, even if the rest of the story might. A man’s mind may hide fearful things in its dark corners that are never brought to light; but the smoke from the Devil’s foot, when it burned, acted as the brightest illuminator of terror I have ever experienced. It was not just the paranoia which gripped my very soul, not the way I felt as if I had lost control of all my limbs, my own body betraying me. But the things that my mind conjured, a thousand images that I had hoped might stay buried - from Afghanistan, yes, but also from the years of cases upon which I had accompanied Holmes, and from my worst imaginings. Four years, he has been back, and yet still I saw in that thick smoke the scenario which I had constructed, of Moriarty dragging Holmes into the abyss of Reichenbach Falls - and yet more, every possible way I might lose him coming to fruition before my eyes, which felt as though they were being forced open by some unseen hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Small wonder, then, that the sight of him was what broke through the illusion; though it was some struggle to differentiate between this Holmes, shouting incoherently and pale with terror, and the Holmes I had seen in a hundred different nightmares. It was only when he gripped my shoulders with his astonishing strength and shouted my Christian name that the spell of the smoke truly left me, and I dragged us both out onto the step of the cottage and into the fresh air. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It took quite some time for us to return to ourselves; I had only made it a short distance out of the cottage, and so we lay upon the grassy lawn by the little front garden and gasped for air. Holmes did not once let go of me once he’d gotten hold, and I found myself returning to reality with his long fingers curled around my wrist as if to tether me, himself, or perhaps us both to the material world. I think I said something sharp, about the folly of such an experiment, once we were approaching verticality again-- and the sincerity with which he took my face in his hands and apologized threatened to overtake my already frayed nerves. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>None of it, of course, was terribly surprising, except for the effect the drug had upon us; he had given me every opportunity to leave. As if I would have allowed him to conduct this experiment upon himself, alone, in such a state as he was in. And Holmes has always had a streak of self-destruction; I suspected that, in the absence of overworking himself, or succumbing to his other vices, he had found another way. Certainly I think he thought as much, from the way he sprang into action for the purposes of lobbing the offending lamp over the nearest cliff and into the choppy waters below. What to make of that, I still cannot be sure; only that it was the closest he’d gotten to the cliff’s edge in our whole time in Cornwall. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In any case, our poisoning of ourselves did the case a great deal of good, and despite my own head aching from fear and exertion, I tolerated the presence of Dr. Sterndale and his story of lost love and grief-driven vengeance. Sterndale was, of course, furious at Holmes’s accusations - and had me wishing I had thought to bring a revolver on this, a restful holiday - right up until he got ahold of himself, and until Holmes made it clear that he knew much of the story himself already. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Holmes guessed as much, himself, but I must admit in writing here that I found a modicum of understanding in his rage; for three years, all I wished was that I could somehow find vengeance against a dead man, whose body still lies at the bottom of a Swiss waterfall. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If it had been you- ” he said, later, and then cut himself off for the purposes of smoking a little more, though I knew the sentiment well, and returned it without hesitation. “Even I might act as our lawless lion-hunter had done.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thus, while I made my usual protestations against Holmes taking the law unto himself - as much as he did in this case, leaving evidence and hints behind for the local police and knowing they would not catch the scent nearly as quickly as he had - I found myself in agreement with his judgement. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After all, the law is not always correct. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The rest of our holiday passed without incident, and Holmes dedicated the remainder of our time in Cornwall to tracing the roots of the Cornish language back to its Chaldean foundations, and to taking the rest that it seemed he was finally convinced he needed to take. For my own part, I busied myself in the way I knew best: taking care of him. This task was made greatly easier after the case had been solved, for he accepted my fussing with minimal complaints, and spent his days wrapped in one of the several blankets furnished by both the cottage and our own luggage, absorbed either in his own study of linguistics or his violin, which he had brought with him but scarcely touched before now. And his nights, despite that our sleeping habits never had quite aligned, he spent largely in bed - which was where I happened to spend my own nights, as well. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the final day of our holiday, I finally did manage to find the little morocco case, laying forgotten among the general untidiness that accompanied Holmes’s particular methods of research, for cases and monographs alike. Loath though I was to broach the topic - and though I hoped naively that he really had simply forgotten to add it to his own luggage - I nonetheless brought it to the bedroom we shared and set it atop his neatly folded clothes in his open trunk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, Watson- !” said he, with one of his little suppressed smiles, “I shall have no need of that upon our return to London.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I stood dumbfounded, my own suspicions confirmed to the positive, in such a sudden way as to render me speechless. Holmes added, unnecessarily, “I have given it up.” And then, after a moment and with some small difficulty, he continued: “Though I do think I will need your backing to leave it behind me with any kind of permanence.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I was inclined to touch upon that same phrase I had uttered upon his return from death - </span>
  <em>
    <span>when you like, where you like</span>
  </em>
  <span> - but found contentment by confirming my support instead by crossing the little bedroom and kissing him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sits downstairs now, in our front room at Baker Street, sawing away upon his violin, which he plays with much greater frequency of late, and I will soon join him; we have plans for supper and an opera performance. </span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Thus concludes personal notes upon the case of the Cornish Horror. JHW</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is based both on the original ACD story and the Granada adaptation. Devil’s Foot is one of my favourite post-Hiatus stories, and Granada adapted it in such a lovely way and added such rich character detail. Getting rid of a drug subplot because of your youth audience has never been done so delicately or as in-character. Jeremy Brett’s work as Holmes in the episode is exquisite, and Hardwick does a wonderful job of playing Watson as aware that Holmes is really struggling and taking good care of him while still being upset by his self-destructive tendencies. I can't lie, though, this was also driven by Holmes saying he has never loved and my only reaction being like "NEWSFLASH, YOU'VE LOVED WATSON ALL THIS TIME!!!"</p>
<p>Anyway, I really feel that Devil's Foot marks the start of recovery for Holmes - especially in the Granada adaptation - both from his addiction and any Reichenbach-related trauma he might have. I also think it plants the seeds of his eventual retirement to Sussex Downs. This story isn't meant to imply that he never struggles with his addiction or mental health ever again, but simply that he's taken the first step on the road to recovery; it's never an easy path, but he has his Watson for support. </p>
<p>I like to think Watson keeps case notes, which are relatively easily legible though probably only comprehensible to him and Holmes (and maybe sometimes Lestrade, if he was involved and could glean from context), and then a separate personal notebook written in some kind of terribly doctor-scrawled shorthand that literally only he can read. Thus the more open expressions of their relationship and less detail about the case itself; Devil’s Foot kind of solves itself, anyway. Obviously he uses both, in an edited manner, to compile his stories. </p>
<p>on a much less formal note, i'm really going through it about holmeswatson lately, which is what's really at the heart of all this. oh doyle we're really in it now. this work might become part of a series if i get overcome again and feel the need to do more of this... we'll see. :)</p>
<p>Find me with more hot takes and incoherent shrieking on Tumblr at <a>mycenaae</a> !</p></blockquote></div></div>
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